Author Topic: Health care in your city/province  (Read 8805 times)

Stachey

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Health care in your city/province
« on: August 12, 2024, 01:56:23 PM »
Wondering if people can weigh in on the state of health care in their Canadian city/ province. Specifically:
- do you have a family doctor?
- does your hospital ever close its emergency due to lack of staff?
Thanks!

GuitarStv

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Re: Health care in your city/province
« Reply #1 on: August 12, 2024, 02:15:29 PM »
Toronto (east end) here.  I do have a family doctor, but it's very hard to actually get in to see her when I need to so I usually go to a walk-in instead.  (You have to book an appointment more than a week in advance, and I only really see a doctor for acute problems - broken bones, sprains, trouble breathing, etc.)  I've seen our family doctor once in the past nine years that we've had her.

Our hospital has never closed due to emergency, but the last time I was trying to go to our hospital for treatment (my at that point five year old son had managed to drop a weight on his hand and it was very badly bruised so we weren't sure if it was broken) we waited for 14 hours in the ER and then just went home without getting X-rays.  That was in 2019 and from what I hear things are worse today.  Prior to that, I had to go in to the ER for a very deep cut that led blood poisoning back in 2013 and there was no waiting at all (although in that case I was triaged as high priority as it was considered life threatening).

Overall I've been able to get the (relatively little) care and treatment that I've needed over time, but the only reliable way I've been able see a doctor for most stuff has been to use walk-in clinics (showing up before they open the doors usually results in a relatively minimal wait time).  Everything I've heard of our hospitals here in Ontario is that they're badly overfilled and understaffed right now so I try very hard to avoid them.

PoutineLover

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Re: Health care in your city/province
« Reply #2 on: August 12, 2024, 02:34:32 PM »
I'm in Quebec and I have a family doctor group, but not my own doctor. It took almost ten years on the waiting list to even get that. The one time I needed an appointment it only took a couple days.

I personally have never had to go to the emergency room (knock on wood) but all the health care related to my pregnancies and children has been satisfactory enough. It does involve long waits at clinics and sometimes a couple months to get an appointment with a specialist, but we also haven't had anything life threatening happen and the urgent things we did have were seen faster.

My child's one ER visit took about 6hours to get seen but we had excellent care overnight and left in the morning in much better shape. The ERs in Montreal are regularly over capacity but I don't think they ever close.

My biggest complaint now is probably that the government is bringing the language police into medical facilities and that is only going to harm people in an already underfunded and overloaded system.

SunnyDays

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Re: Health care in your city/province
« Reply #3 on: August 12, 2024, 11:08:15 PM »
I have had the same family doctor for almost 30 years ( thankfully he’s about 10 years younger than me), and I do go for regular follow ups for a couple of issues.  I make those appointments 3-6 months in advance and never have a problem with that, but if I need to see him more urgently, it’s a 6 week wait.  On occasion, I’ve been able to snag a cancellation or get in to see a different doctor, but otherwise I’d have to go to Urgent Care or a walk in, both of which only take same day appointments, so I would be competing against everyone else every day.  Luckily I haven’t had to do that yet.

I did need to go to the ER in the winter with a broken wrist and I waited 8 hours in the waiting room, then 2 hours in the consultation room to actually see a doctor, followed shortly after by an X-ray, then a wait of 11 more hours, during which I was never told they were keeping me until the orthopedic doctor got to work at another hospital to see if I needed surgery.  I had a bed during this time and thankfully got a bit of sleep, but what an ordeal.  While I was still in the waiting room, new arrivals were being told the wait was 24 to 30 hours, and lots just left.

In another city, my very frail 93 year old father fell and had to call an ambulance.  He was kept on the stretcher he went in on for about 15 minutes, then sent out to the regular waiting room to sit for 6 hours!  He had broken some ribs and punctured and collapsed his lung and was bleeding internally, which we didn’t know until he got X-rays.  I was livid that they triaged him as they did, with quite a few young, ambulant people getting called in before him.  This is what our system has come to.  There just seem to be no solutions and I honestly fear for my future as I age if nothing changes.

Stachey

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Re: Health care in your city/province
« Reply #4 on: August 13, 2024, 10:02:30 AM »
Thanks for weighing in everyone. It’s as grim as I suspected.

It’d be nice to live in a LCOL area but even the HCOL areas have poor health care.

Is there anyone in smaller towns that would like to weigh in?
Also I was wondering about BC or SK or MB?
( Not sure where you are Sunny Days?)


treffpunkt

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Re: Health care in your city/province
« Reply #5 on: August 13, 2024, 11:21:03 AM »
No family doctor.
No hospital in the town I'm in.

The closest hospital is in Nanaimo and it's completely overwhelmed. My area is extremely popular with (non-FIRE-aged) retirees from throughout Canada so you can imagine the impact that has on healthcare demand and availability.

SunnyDays

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Re: Health care in your city/province
« Reply #6 on: August 13, 2024, 12:29:40 PM »
I'm in Manitoba, in a small city of 20K, an hour outside of Winnipeg, so MCOL.  At least we're big enough that the hospital has never shut down, but when others in smaller towns around us do, on occasion, then people end up coming here, which drives up the wait times further.

Metalcat

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Re: Health care in your city/province
« Reply #7 on: August 13, 2024, 01:06:00 PM »
I live in Ottawa and rural Newfoundland.

The reason I live in both is for access to medical care in Ontario, but even that is absolute trash.

I've had horrifically painful ovarian torsion for almost a year and I'm still waiting on a consult, and I'm sure it will take another year to get surgery.

I'm seriously considering travel to another country to just get it done, it's minor day surgery.

Sayyadina

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Re: Health care in your city/province
« Reply #8 on: August 14, 2024, 11:47:37 PM »
I live in Victoria. We just moved back from the States last year, so changing systems has been an experience (top of the line insurance through work was really good. Apparently you interview pediatricians in the US to find someone you click with and you do this at about 5 months pregnant so they can book time to see you in the hospital with your new born on day one? That was wild).

Kid #2 in Canada, and I can't say enough good things about the midwife care here versus the OB in the US (emotionally, anyway. Medically both were superb). I had some weird complications so we still saw an OB here regularly but they weren't primary care or in the delivery room, more a consultant.

We were on BC's waiting list for a family doctor, but actually got jumped to the top due to having a newborn. We have a NP now, have seen her multiple times for regular check ups, all good. Her office has an MD that she can refer us to in case we need one (I had a weird time getting short term disability during pregnancy because the insurance company would only take medical paperwork from an MD and not my midwives, so after six weeks of runaround I managed to deal with that through a walk in clinic. That was a terrible experience, and 100% because of the insurance company. So making sure I could access an MD as necessary was important to me).

So far no emergency room experiences, thank goodness. We had one in Victoria before moving to the US back in 2010 or so, and apparently we picked "the wrong hospital" so we ended up waiting longer, but my husband was seen within a couple hours. I've heard stories from parent friends of the 12+ hour waits though.
« Last Edit: August 14, 2024, 11:49:39 PM by Sayyadina »

Dogastrophe

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Re: Health care in your city/province
« Reply #9 on: August 15, 2024, 05:06:47 AM »
I live in Halifax. Have had the same family doctor since we moved here 20 years ago. He is roughly our age and seems to enjoy what he does. He told me that he has set his patient numbers at a level he is comfortable with and has consistently told the Province he will not take on more. We each have a specialist or two as well (we're getting to the age where we are collecting 'ologists').

The one good thing to come out of Covid is telephone consults. We used to have to book an in office appointment to get a prescription refilled. Now we get a call back same day, 5 min 'appointment', and prescription refill sent to pharmacy.

Thankfully I haven't had an emergency room visit in a number of years. I'm hearing that visits are resulting in waits between 8 and 12 hours. Much of the issue is caused by people without a family doc using the emergency room as a primary care facility (either that or have to get in line at a walk in clinic at 5am with 50 others for a chance to see a doctor sometime that day).

We've considered moving to different parts of the country but family doctor access keeps holding us back. We may move to a lcol part of the province so long as it's within an hour commute of the city so we can get to appointments. My goal is to die the day before my family doctor retires :)

rocketpj

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Re: Health care in your city/province
« Reply #10 on: August 17, 2024, 02:10:15 PM »
BC here, no complaints.  We had a family doctor for 12 years but he moved away.  He set us up with another doctor, who has been great.

Both of my kids have had multi-day hospital stays over the past few years - one for a random and terrifying case of pneumonia, the other for a lacerated spleen from a hockey game.  In both cases they were very well taken care of, the family received excellent support, and the outcomes were good.

I had a coworker in 2004 whose partner worked for the nurses union here in BC, and she was talking at length about the looming nursing shortage, as well as the looming shortage of doctors.  The union has been shouting it from the rooftops for two decades, but the government (provincial and federal) at the time saw no electoral advantage in doing anything about it.  In fact both governments were ideologically opposed to the notion that any union might know anything at all worth knowing.

So here we are 20 years later, in the 'find out' part of the FAFO formula as it relates to neglecting health care.  Thankfully both levels of government are presently working hard to resolve the ongoing crises, particularly in the Emergency Rooms.  Note how there haven't been as many headlines lately?

Less good news is that at least one level of government is looking to change back to the usual 'free market' religion and alllow our health system to further degrade, so as to give another tax cut to the rich.  Sigh.  I'm rich, but I'd rather pay a bit of taxes and have adequate health care available for all of us.

Prairie Gal

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Re: Health care in your city/province
« Reply #11 on: August 18, 2024, 07:54:25 PM »
I live in a small city of about 100,000 people in southern Alberta. I've had the same family doctor forever, but she wanted to retire a few years ago, so the clinic got a new doctor in and I'm on her patient list now. My old doctor didn't fully retire, so I actually have 1.5 doctors, and never have a problem getting seen by one of them. However, there are tons of people with no family doctor. Some pharmacies have clinics with prescribing pharmacists. Is this common elsewhere?

Our ER has never closed, but some of the smaller towns around here close fairly regularly. I haven't had to use the ER in years, but apparently wait times are bad. Also, it was reported on the news that women in labour are sometimes being told to go to Calgary (which is two hours away) to deliver their baby.

FLBiker

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Re: Health care in your city/province
« Reply #12 on: August 19, 2024, 01:24:03 PM »
Wow, this is a fascinating read as a (relatively) new Canadian!

We moved to rural-ish Nova Scotia (1.25 hours from the Halifax) 4 years ago, and one of the reasons we picked our town is that it had a hospital in it.  To my knowledge, it has never closed it's ER due to lack of staff, but many other ERs in the province have.  I've gone a few times.  Most times (I typically go early AM) I haven't had much of a wait (in and out in less than 2 hours) but one time I went with my daughter and we left after 2 hours because I didn't think she'd get in.  There was a combo of a couple of nasty viruses going around, plus she didn't have a fever during triage, so I figured we were at the bottom of the list.

We have a family doctor, who is part of a group.  It took us 3 years to get her, but she is very easy to see.  In reading this thread, I realize how rare that is!  I can typically see her within a few days, and certainly within a week or so.  One reason is that in addition to "regular" appointments, she does some really early ones (between 6:30 and 8) and those are typically easy to get (and fit well into my schedule).  I've gone to see her a few times in the last year, and it's always been quick and easy.

Clinics in our area are basically non-functional.  We tried using them before we had our family doctor, but you'd have to call immediately when they opened (@ 8 AM) and they'd be full for the day by 8:15 AM, and the line would be busy the whole time, so getting through was a lottery.  I used Maple (which was free for folks without a family doctor) a few times, but even there we'd often have to wait an hour or two.  As someone who works from home on the computer that was fine, but for my wife and daughter it wasn't very useful.

Referrals have taken a really long time.  My daughter has had acid reflux off and on (fortunately now off) and was supposed to see a GI doc but that hasn't happened and it's been over 1.5 years.  I've had a similar wait for a colonoscopy.

Honestly, I feel like healthcare is the one negative that I'd cite from our move from the US.  I appreciate not having insurance dependent on my job, though.  I do wonder, though, if at some point we'll relocate for better access.  One thing we've talked about is getting an apartment somewhere in the US where we'd use some combination of medicare (once we're 65) and / or a membership-based clinic.  We're fortunate in that we paid enough into the US system that we'll be medicare eligible.

JAYSLOL

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Re: Health care in your city/province
« Reply #13 on: August 19, 2024, 05:58:26 PM »
Vernon BC, we’ve got a hospital, as far as I’m aware the emergency room hasn’t shut down here, or at least it’s uncommon enough that I’ve never heard of it happening. We do have a family doctor, but similar to others because we had a kid and they had to give us all one because of that, otherwise I’ve heard it’s fairly hard to find one. There aren’t any functioning walk in clinic in town anymore, there used to be at least three, now there’s none, just the hospital and one other clinic that you need to book an appointment for.  I haven’t had a lot of experience needing medical care here, but my limited interactions have been positive

scottish

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Re: Health care in your city/province
« Reply #14 on: August 26, 2024, 06:17:51 PM »
Ottawa, ON.   Our GP is part of  a clinic where they bill on a per-capita basis (the government has some special term for it, the clinic gets paid by the number of patients on their roster).   This means that we can't see a GP who isn't part of the clinic, or our home clinic will get a charge back from the government.   I think they'll boot you out if you do very much of this.

Access has been pretty reasonable.    I've been able to get in to see her in 1-2 days if I needed to this year.    My specialists are a bit more mixed.   The rheumatologist is pretty good at about 1 1/2 weeks.   The GI has been pretty hard to reach.

DW had to go to the ER last winter.   She waited there for about 18 hours before she was admitted.     

Ontario has been trying to use less qualified staff for routine matters.   Pharmacists can write prescriptions for various minor infections.   Optometrists can handle routine eye problems and will screen for opthamologists.    Nurse practitioners can do lots of stuff to off load GPs.   I think this is generally good, but I'm a little leery about pharmacists qualifications based on my personal experiences.

Metalcat

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Re: Health care in your city/province
« Reply #15 on: August 26, 2024, 06:43:06 PM »
Ottawa, ON.   Our GP is part of  a clinic where they bill on a per-capita basis (the government has some special term for it, the clinic gets paid by the number of patients on their roster).   This means that we can't see a GP who isn't part of the clinic, or our home clinic will get a charge back from the government.   I think they'll boot you out if you do very much of this.

Access has been pretty reasonable.    I've been able to get in to see her in 1-2 days if I needed to this year.    My specialists are a bit more mixed.   The rheumatologist is pretty good at about 1 1/2 weeks.   The GI has been pretty hard to reach.

DW had to go to the ER last winter.   She waited there for about 18 hours before she was admitted.     

Ontario has been trying to use less qualified staff for routine matters.   Pharmacists can write prescriptions for various minor infections.   Optometrists can handle routine eye problems and will screen for opthamologists.    Nurse practitioners can do lots of stuff to off load GPs.   I think this is generally good, but I'm a little leery about pharmacists qualifications based on my personal experiences.

While I understand this sentiment, it's not like MDs are all that safe prescribing either.

My pharmacist is crucial for keeping my various MDs from fucking me up too badly with prescriptions. At least once a year my pharmacist looks at a prescription I've been given and says "absolutely not, I'm not giving you this."

I'm not saying that from a judgemental place, I've had pharmacists catch my prescribing fuck ups, I've also had many, many phone calls with pharmacists asking them what I should be prescribing.

Everyone in the diagnosis/prescription chain is highly fallible and often kind of clueless.

scottish

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Re: Health care in your city/province
« Reply #16 on: August 27, 2024, 06:03:57 PM »
Ottawa, ON.   Our GP is part of  a clinic where they bill on a per-capita basis (the government has some special term for it, the clinic gets paid by the number of patients on their roster).   This means that we can't see a GP who isn't part of the clinic, or our home clinic will get a charge back from the government.   I think they'll boot you out if you do very much of this.

Access has been pretty reasonable.    I've been able to get in to see her in 1-2 days if I needed to this year.    My specialists are a bit more mixed.   The rheumatologist is pretty good at about 1 1/2 weeks.   The GI has been pretty hard to reach.

DW had to go to the ER last winter.   She waited there for about 18 hours before she was admitted.     

Ontario has been trying to use less qualified staff for routine matters.   Pharmacists can write prescriptions for various minor infections.   Optometrists can handle routine eye problems and will screen for opthamologists.    Nurse practitioners can do lots of stuff to off load GPs.   I think this is generally good, but I'm a little leery about pharmacists qualifications based on my personal experiences.

While I understand this sentiment, it's not like MDs are all that safe prescribing either.

My pharmacist is crucial for keeping my various MDs from fucking me up too badly with prescriptions. At least once a year my pharmacist looks at a prescription I've been given and says "absolutely not, I'm not giving you this."

I'm not saying that from a judgemental place, I've had pharmacists catch my prescribing fuck ups, I've also had many, many phone calls with pharmacists asking them what I should be prescribing.

Everyone in the diagnosis/prescription chain is highly fallible and often kind of clueless.

Yeah, keeping 2 specialists aligned can be a bit of work too.    Fortunately my meds have been pretty stable since 2017 so I haven't had that particular problem.

sixwings

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Re: Health care in your city/province
« Reply #17 on: August 29, 2024, 09:08:07 AM »
I'm in Victoria and it's a total mess. I haven't had a GP in 7ish years and have been on the waitlist. My wife has a Nurse Practitioner but they arne't accepting any other new patients. Walk in clinics are closing all the time and no new ones are being opened up, if you need to go to a walk in you need to call them the second they open, usually at 8:30 and hope you're lucky to get a spot for the day, by 8:31 they are all full for the day, it's a bit of a lottery whether you'll get in to see one and you have to keep trying every morning until you get one. I havent heard about times that the ER has been closed but in general the ER here is a MESS and wait times are often 10+ hours, even for things relatively urgent. A big driver of that is because people can't get into a walk in or a family doctor so they go to the ER for things that they dont need to get to the ER about. My wifes friend had a terrible allergic reaction to some sort of face cream that caused intense burning on her face, she waited at the ER for over 12 hours before they saw her and now her face is disfigured and she has to get reconstructive surgery, all for something that the ER would have been able to treat if they'd been able to see her within like 2 hours. Another friend had to wait at the ER with their child who broke a leg for over 12 hours. It's really, really bad in victoria right now.

I have a skin tag that's grown, I can't see a doctor about it, been trying to get into a walk in for weeks calling every few days as my schedule allows it. I just need a referral to a dermatologist which will be months after I even get the referral.

However, I have heard that victoria/vancouver island is the worst in all of canada. Our political situation is looking grave too, it's very possible the conservatives win the next election in which case I expect it'll get worse. The current NDP is actually doing a good job and trying to fix the issue, and have been having some success with growing the number of doctors in the province, but it will take decades to fix an issue that a conservative government created over several decades. And now people want the conservatives back because the NDP didn't fix all their fuck ups overnight.
« Last Edit: August 29, 2024, 09:10:42 AM by sixwings »

Metalcat

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Re: Health care in your city/province
« Reply #18 on: August 29, 2024, 10:05:33 AM »
I'm in Victoria and it's a total mess. I haven't had a GP in 7ish years and have been on the waitlist. My wife has a Nurse Practitioner but they arne't accepting any other new patients. Walk in clinics are closing all the time and no new ones are being opened up, if you need to go to a walk in you need to call them the second they open, usually at 8:30 and hope you're lucky to get a spot for the day, by 8:31 they are all full for the day, it's a bit of a lottery whether you'll get in to see one and you have to keep trying every morning until you get one. I havent heard about times that the ER has been closed but in general the ER here is a MESS and wait times are often 10+ hours, even for things relatively urgent. A big driver of that is because people can't get into a walk in or a family doctor so they go to the ER for things that they dont need to get to the ER about. My wifes friend had a terrible allergic reaction to some sort of face cream that caused intense burning on her face, she waited at the ER for over 12 hours before they saw her and now her face is disfigured and she has to get reconstructive surgery, all for something that the ER would have been able to treat if they'd been able to see her within like 2 hours. Another friend had to wait at the ER with their child who broke a leg for over 12 hours. It's really, really bad in victoria right now.

I have a skin tag that's grown, I can't see a doctor about it, been trying to get into a walk in for weeks calling every few days as my schedule allows it. I just need a referral to a dermatologist which will be months after I even get the referral.

However, I have heard that victoria/vancouver island is the worst in all of canada. Our political situation is looking grave too, it's very possible the conservatives win the next election in which case I expect it'll get worse. The current NDP is actually doing a good job and trying to fix the issue, and have been having some success with growing the number of doctors in the province, but it will take decades to fix an issue that a conservative government created over several decades. And now people want the conservatives back because the NDP didn't fix all their fuck ups overnight.

Worse than the north and Newfoundland?? Fuck...that's really fucking bad.

Yeah, what people don't really grasp is just how bad outcomes can be from waits for serious, but non-life-threatening conditions when the system is overloaded.

I remember during a surgical rotation over a decade ago seeing a patient whose eye was savable, but they couldn't get him in soon enough, so it was guaranteed he would lose his eye to basal cell carcinoma. Totally preventable, but because basal cell isn't life threatening and his eye wasn't in imminent danger, he could not be triaged higher until it got to that point. Both triage levels, if the system was working well, should theoretically get him in quickly enough to save the eye, but the surgeons knew it wouldn't, so they were guaranteeing that he would have to wait too long to save it, even though they had PLENTY of time to save it, just because their hands were tied and because triage timelines did not match reality.

This was in Quebec though, where their system has had pockets of absolutely abysmal care *cough cough, western Quebec, cough cough* that have been embarrassingly bad for decades due to neglect.

The rest of the country is just steadily catching up to that unfathomably low bar.

I was checking Ontario surgical timelines and a whopping <30% of patients in the region I checked were getting surgeries within the recommended timelines for their triaged level. And that includes all emergency, life saving surgeries, so just imagine what that means for anyone assessed below the highest level...

That's okay though...many of us will get there while we wait...

falling leaves

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Re: Health care in your city/province
« Reply #19 on: October 23, 2024, 10:49:01 PM »
I'm in good health as far as I know. But I went to a doctor about suspected food allergies and a lump on my hand. He referred me to 2 specialists, it was fall of 2022 when he requested the referrals. The plastic surgeon for my hand appointment was in March this year (15 or 16 months) and the Gastroenterologist was July this year (2024) is that 17 or 18 months? The gastro doc apologised for the fact that it had been 3 calendar years from making an appointment to seeing him.
The appointment was about 10 or 12 minutes, he mentioned a blood test for allergies and I told him I had an appointment with an allergist, so no need I'll ask the allergist. I ask the allergist and he said they only give that test to people in danger of anaphylaxis. So I called the gasto doc office again, spoke to his secretary who then asked him about the test, called me back and said he suggests going to a different allergist? I left it at that. That was all I got over 3 calendar years.
I had a doctor that said he would be my family doctor, but his appointment times were 3 weeks or so away. I just gave up and nowadays if I need a doctor I just go to a walk in clinic.
I worry about getting older and having to deal with the medical system in Canada.